Search on for entangled right whale

Crews were scanning waters in the Gulf of St. Lawrence on Monday in a bid to find an endangered North Atlantic right whale snarled in fishing line and buoys, just days after a humpback whale was successfully disentangled from a length of rope.

Moira Brown of the Canadian Whale Institute said the right whale was first seen at about 11 a.m. Friday during a surveillance flight and did not have any gear on it. Several hours later, the same whale was spotted near Miscou Island, N.B., with a couple of small buoys and rope trailing along both sides. She said it also had fresh abrasions and appeared to have blood on its tail.

The flight by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration could stay on scene only for about 10 minutes, but had to leave as it needed to refuel. Flights the next day could not find the animal.

“We know we have an entangled whale out there after the end of the crab season, but we don’t know what kind of gear is on it,” she said. “This was a very fresh entanglement.”

Brown, who is based in Campobello, N.B., said the whale — a male who was born in 2003 and is known as #3312 — appeared to be agitated and thrashing when it was spotted. But she said the difficulty is that entangled whales often “take off,” making it hard to locate them again.

A spokeswoman with the federal Fisheries Department said the whale was last seen Friday, but that the search will continue in the southern gulf.

The incident marks the first known entanglement of the season in the gulf, where the endangered species migrates in the summer months to feed after calving off the southern U.S.

The discovery of the entangled animal came a day before a humpback calf was freed from a mess of fishing line in the Bay of Fundy just off of Brier Island, N.S.

The Marine Animal Response Society said the Campobello Whale Rescue Team carried out the difficult rescue on Saturday, a year after it lost one of its members during the disentanglement of a right whale.